Central Asia Trip Report

Central Asia Trip Report Aug 15-Sept 29, 1993 Introduction From mid-August until early October, Jane and I have been touring parts of Central Asia. During the first part of the trip we were accompanied by Luree Miller and Elizabeth (“Ben”) Booz. We started in Almaty, the capital of Kazakhstan, and spent a couple of weeks in Kyrgyzstan. Then we drove over a high pass in the Tien Shan mountains to Kashgar in westernmost China. Ben and Luree went back from Kashgar, while Jane and I continued east along the old Silk Route as far as Urumchi. After thus touring the west-central portion of Xinjiang, we flew via Chengdu to Tibet. We spent several days in Lhasa, then drove around south-central Tibet to the Nepalese border, and came home via Kathmandu. Only Kathmandu was already familiar--the rest was new territory as far as I was concerned. I kept running notes and most of this chronicle is based on them. Thus the account that follows is made up of first impressions; I offer them as that and that only. Take them for what they are--anecdotal flashes and broad-brush inferences about a large and unfamiliar region, part of which is just beginning to move out of a deep freeze imposed by a state socialist system, and part of which is still paralyzed but getting ready to follow suit-- if it can. We spent a couple of days in Kazakhstan before going on to Kyrgyzstan. Jane, who joined me in Frankfurt en route, had already spent ten days or so in Turkmenistan, and I absorbed some impressions of that new country from her. We heard enough about Tajikistan and Uzbekistan to give me a sketchy feeling for those states. These five countries, more or less united by language and culture on the one hand, and by recent history on the other, can be considered to form a distinct region-- a trans-Caspian grouping of Muslim, largely Turkic-speaking states spun off from the former USSR. Culturally and historically, this region relates in turn to the Uighur-speaking populations that form a majority in the western parts of the neighboring Chinese province of Xinjiang. If, after Deng and his cohorts leave the scene, China spins off its peripheral areas, as Russia did when the Soviet empire collapsed, then much--not all--of Xinjiang province may find its destiny (to use a Gaullist term) with the Turkophone countries that have recently spun off from the former USSR. It is thus possible to envision an eventual federation or confederation of Turkic nations stretching all the way from Turfan to Istanbul. But that dream is likely to prove little more than a dream for as far ahead as anyone can see. For one thing, Deng is still around, and the course China will take in the future is impossible to predict with any assurance. Another factor is that economics combine with recent history and, to a considerable extent, current demographics, in ways that are likely to tie the CIS states to Moscow for many years to come, while much the same will hold true for Xinjiang’s ties with Beijing, even if the Chinese empire follows the example of the USSR and falls apart. And finally, each of the five trans-Caspian Turkic CIS states is rapidly developing its own separate sense of national identity, its own personality so to say, based on its particular geography, history, and ethnic composition. Tibet is totally different from the others, and from just about every other place in the world, for that matter. At present it is a continuing tragedy; the Chinese rule is an offense to humanity; and my visit only reinforced my hope that in the fairly near future, Tibet will once again be independent. 1 Profiles of the CIS’s Central Asian States Kazakhstan is huge and sparsely populated--the size of Australia, with a population of only about 17 million. It is truly a multi-ethnic state, with the Kazakhs themselves constituting just under half the population, while ethnic Russians are almost as numerous--over 40%. The government appears to be controlled by the Kazakhs but its policies are sensitive to and solicitous of the interests of this large Russian minority. The ethnic Kazakhs are Muslim, but Islam is weaker, taken less seriously here, than in any of the other Muslim spin-off states. There is only one mosque in Almaty, the capital--a large and spacious city. Kazakhstan has enormous natural resources--notably petroleum and a wide variety of minerals, and Almaty is turning into a boom town, full of Texans and Germans and other Western entrepreneurs hoping to cash in on some of this natural bounty. Kyrgyzstan is much smaller and less populous. There is a substantial Russian minority, though the proportion is smaller than in Kazakhstan. Much of the country is mountainous, like Nepal. The Kazakhs were traditionally pastoralists out on the steppes, whereas the Kyrgyz are mountain folk, also pastoralist, but showing the same kinds of differences in temperament from their Kazakh cousins that one observes in other parts of the world, eg, Nepali hillsmen vs the Indians to their south, Berber hillsmen vs plains Arabs in the Maghreb, and so forth. They are naturally independent and have embraced democracy more enthusiastically than any of their neighbors. Their women seem to be more independent and assertive than in a more typical Muslim society. They laugh a lot, and like to drink and gamble. Their main problem is that they are almost totally disorganized, and lacking any resource base comparable to that in Kazakhstan, the eyes of Texas are not upon them; there is no army of carpetbaggers in Bishkek, as there is in Almaty, eager to help them become a modern state. 2 The Uzbeks are harder to warm to, from all I hear. They worry their neighbors because there are so many of them, twenty million or so, and because they appear to their neighbors to be dogmatic and sullen. They take their Islam pretty seriously, yet communism continues to thrive in Uzbekistan, albeit under somewhat different colors than before. They say they want tourists but make it almost impossible for tourists to get visas, because the stench of bureaucratic paranoia that beclouded the whole Soviet system in the bad old days still persists. They look like the heavies in the unfolding Central Asian drama. The Tajiks are the odd man out in this grouping, both because their language is not Turkic, but related to Farsi, and because they are so thoroughly divided amongst themselves that their main interest seems to be in killing each other. Their tribes relate to ones south of their border in Afghanistan, and I would hazard the prediction that their “destiny” for better or worse is to become a kind of northern extension of Afghanistan, a place to be visited only if you are wearing a bulletproof vest, rather than as a functioning member of this grand Turkic confederation or region I alluded to earlier. One problem with excluding them in this cavalier manner, however, is geographic: they have tentacles of their territory intertwined with pieces of Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan in the fertile, densely populated Fergana Valley. Somebody in Moscow, way back, did a pretty cynical job of gerrymandering when they divvied up that populous area between the three states, with the result that it’s nearly impossible to get anywhere there without crossing what are now international boundaries. Turkmenistan resembles Kazakhstan in that it is fairly big and sparsely populated, but has considerable natural wealth, notably oil, and a corresponding interest on the part of Western investors to come help develop it. By contrast, it takes its Islam somewhat more seriously, and is more exposed to Iranian and less to Russian influences than is Kazakhstan. The Chinese Side: Xinjiang and Tibet Xinjiang: Like Kazakhstan, Xinjiang is a huge region, arid, sparsely populated, and endowed with considerable natural resources. The indigenous population is mostly Uighur (pronounced Wee-grr), though at least in the far western portions one sees Kyrgyz and Kazakh and other Turkic minorities. Uighur are just as much Turkic, culturally, linguistically, and historically, as the Kazakhs and the others; they look like, and dress like, not only the Kazakhs and Kyrgyz, but the Azeri Turks of Iran’s Azerbaijan province whom I knew when I was consul in Tabriz, many years ago. I was told that during the area’s golden era a few centuries back, the Uighur constituted the real brains of the Mongol Empire. There is also a substantial Han, or Chinese population, particularly in the eastern regions, close to the Chinese heartland. If the Chinese empire should follow the route of the Soviet one, I have no doubt the Uighurs would be delighted to set themselves up as an independent state, do an about face, and start associating in various ways with their Turkic cousins across their western frontiers. I doubt, however, if they could take the whole of the province as presently demarcated with them--the Chinese are simply too well entrenched over in the eastern portion. Tibet: The colonial nature of the Han presence in Tibet is much more obviously oppressive than in Xinjiang. The Chinese don’t belong there and it is pretty apparent that the people that do all wish they would get the hell out. Tibetan society has to be one of the most religious societies ever; there is simply no distinction there between religious faith and observance on the one hand, and daily activities on the other. They don’t just go to church on Sunday, they are in church, mentally, all the time.

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